Museum of Occupation

Museum of the Occupation of Latvia - darkometer rating : 5 - A private museum in Riga about the occupation of Latvia by the USSR in 1940/41 and 1944 to 1991 as well as the Nazi German occupation during WWII in between the two Soviet occupations. The original museum building has been undergoing refurbishment for many years; at one point it was scheduled to reopen in 2018, but by 2020 this still hasn't happened. In the meantime the temporary stand-in that I visited in April 2014 remains open. It might be that I'll return to Riga in the summer of 2021, and if so I'll try to find out what the current situation is. UPDATE: at that time it was still housed at the temporary location, but now, as of November 2021, the exhibition is finally moving back to its refurbished permanent location, to re-open in spring 2022. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: in general see under Latvia and Riga , and also cf. Tornakalns and the KGB House . The official full name of the museum is “Museum of the Occupation of Latvia 1940-1991”, but I often refer to it simply as Occupation Museum for short. It has to be noted, however, that it is indeed about both the Soviet and the Nazi German occupations and thus more balanced than its counterpart in Vilnius , the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights , which was formerly misleadingly named “ Genocide Victims Museum ”, and also somewhat more so than its sister institution in Tallinn . The Riga version is run as a private, independent institution that relies on donations alone (i.e. no admission fee is charged – again in contrast to the other two Baltic museums on this theme). It was started in 1993 in the former Riflemen museum in the Old Town.